Communities of practice Etienne Wenger Jean Lave Community of Practice: Learning, meaning and identity (Wenger, 1998) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (Lave and Wenger, 1991)

Theory of Learning. Situated Learning Applications as theory of knowledge management

Learning is identity formation through social participation “Communities of practices are – groups of people (communities) who – share a concern or a passion (domain) for – something they do (practice) – and learn how to do it better – as they interact regularly.”

Why/how it seems relevant to my work? 1.Conceived from anthropological studies of apprenticeship as a learning model 2.Describes the fluid and dynamic nature of Informal learning communities (as seen in gaming, anime cons, MOOCS and unschooling) 3.The model applies to informal and formal communities – can bridge informal and formal learning – “learning is ubiquitous in ongoing activity, though often unrecognized as such” (Lave 1993: 5). 4. Embraced by workplace (business & government)

Questions /next steps 1.Vigotsky? 2.Where in the research cycle? – Descriptive (What’s Happening?) – Causal Relationship – Mechanism Many different domains 1070 hits for empirical studies published in 2013 Time for metaanalysis for the theoretical claims?